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Saturday, December 1, 2012

Quick Hits and a Ha Ha Moment

This has nothing to do with the post

Not a whole lot happened today and it's late. I wanted to share a couple of things anyway, because I'm dedicated and was probably dropped on my head one too many times as a child. The title says quick hits and that's exactly what it's going to be.

Since it drives me slightly crazy without the jump, I'm kind of making things up as I go to fill up space, but I'll stop that now. In case you haven't heard, Friday at 11:59pm EST was the deadline to tender a contract to a player if he is eligible for arbitration. If the player was not tendered a contract, he automatically becomes a free agent and is allowed to negotiate with all 30 teams and is not required to enter arbitration. All of the Mariner players eligible for arbitration were tendered contracts before the deadline. And with that, we continue after the jump.

As stated above, all of the Mariner players were offered a contract, meaning they'll be back for next season unless they are claimed on waivers or DFA'ed for some reason. They are, in no particular order, John Jaso, Robert Andino, Brendan Ryan, Shawn Kelley and Jason Vargas. The one player not on that list who should be, but you've probably already forgotten about, is Josh Kinney. He actually signed a one year contract already and is on the roster. No arbitration process for Kinney and I'm 99.9% certain it's a major league contract.

The ha ha moment was with Andino, as twitter did a double take, in a manner of speaking. Via Geoff Baker's twitter feed:

Note the times on those tweets. In 12 minutes, Andino went from being a free agent after being traded for Trayvon Robinson 5 minutes ago to signing a one year deal with the Mariners. I like to imagine something similar to this transpired in the front office:

Probably not, but when it's this slow in the offseason, you take what you can get. Andino will probably end up competing with Brendan Ryan in spring training for the starting shortstop position, but I seriously doubt it will be much of a competition. Ryan is going to be making quite a bit more than Andino and his defensive skill set is far and away the more valuable of the two. It may not seem like it on the face of it, but between offense and defense, Ryan is the superior player at the moment.

Also happening earlier Friday, Scott Cousins was claimed off of waivers by the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim, which is the most idiotic name for a sports team out there. Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim? It's the Anaheim Angels, and that's going to stick. If I remember..... But I digress. Cousins has gone from the Marlins to the Blue Jays, the Mariners and now the Angels in the span of a few weeks. You may ask why the Mariners claimed him at all then, but why not? He's making the minimum salary and at the time, filled a spot on the 40 man roster and had a chance to be outfield insurance in AAA, if not a backup in the majors. Ultimately, the Mariners chose to protect a few of their prospects from the Rule 5 draft and attempted to pass Cousins through waivers.

Cousins was on the roster for a whole two weeks, and in that time had a more productive Mariners career than Chone Figgins! Oh yeah, I went there. Speaking of going there, most front offices and media members will be heading to Nashville to begin the winter meetings on Monday. Will we see any free agents being signed by our Seattle Mariners? Perhaps a significant trade or two? Here's hoping, because I'm seriously starting to run out of ideas.